Hotteok
Korea's winter street pancake: a yeasted disc filled with brown sugar, cinnamon and peanuts that melt to molten caramel as it griddles.
Overview
A wet yeasted dough, combining plain flour, sweet rice flour, yeast, milk and a little oil, rises for 1 hour. Filling: dark muscovado, cinnamon, chopped peanuts. Dough divides into 8 oily balls; each flattens in the palm, fills with a heaped tablespoon of sugar mix, pinches shut. Pan-fries seam-side-down in oil; presses flat with a heavy spatula; flips; cooks the other side. Eats hot.
Ingredients
Dough
- 250 g plain flour
- 50 g sweet rice flour (mochiko / glutinous rice flour)
- 7 g instant yeast
- 1 tablespoon caster sugar
- ½ teaspoon salt
- 200 ml warm milk
- 1 tablespoon neutral oil
- Extra oil (for hands and pan)
Filling
- 120 g dark muscovado (or soft dark brown sugar)
- 30 g roasted peanuts (chopped)
- 1 ½ teaspoons ground cinnamon
- A pinch of salt
Cooking
- 4 tablespoons neutral oil
Method
Stage 1 - Dough
- In a wide bowl, whisk both flours, yeast, sugar and salt.
- Pour in the warm milk and 1 tablespoon oil.
- Stir with a wooden spoon to a wet sticky dough (don't knead - the dough is too wet to knead conventionally).
- Cover with cling film; rise in a warm spot 1 hour until doubled and bubbly on top.
Stage 2 - Filling
- Combine the muscovado, chopped peanuts, cinnamon and salt in a small bowl.
Stage 3 - Divide
- Oil your hands generously.
- With oily hands, scoop walnut-sized portions of dough (about 70 g each) directly from the bowl.
- The dough should slip off your fingers, oil prevents sticking.
- You should get 8 portions.
Stage 4 - Fill
- Hold one portion in the palm of your hand; flatten to a small disc.
- Place 1 heaped tablespoon of filling in the centre.
- Gather the edges up; pinch firmly at the top to seal.
- The ball should look like a small dumpling, seam pointing up.
Stage 5 - Cook
- Heat a heavy frying pan over medium heat; add 2 tablespoons oil.
- Place 4 hotteok seam-down in the pan.
- Cook 1 minute.
- Press flat with a heavy spatula or a small saucepan lid pressed onto the top of each hotteok (Korean cooks use a special flat hotteok press). Press to about 1 cm thick.
- Cook 2 more minutes - the bottom should be deep gold.
- Flip; cook 2-3 minutes on the second side.
- Lift onto a wire rack; the sugar inside will still be molten.
Stage 6 - Serve
- Eat immediately - but CAREFUL, the inside is volcano-hot.
- The crust should be crisp; the inside molten caramel-peanut.
Notes
- Wet dough, oily hands: the dough is too wet to knead conventionally. Oil is what makes it workable.
- Seal the ball tightly: any gap and the sugar leaks into the pan and burns. Pinch firmly at the seam.
- Press to flatten - don't roll: rolling tears the seam and the sugar leaks out. Press from above with a flat heavy object.
- Eat hot: the molten centre is the entire point. Cooled hotteok have set caramel - still tasty but less dramatic.
Storage
- Best within 30 minutes of cooking.
- Reheats in a hot dry pan 1 minute per side or in a 180°C oven 4 minutes.
- The sugar centre re-melts when reheated.
- Freeze cooked hotteok in a bag, 2 months; reheat from frozen in a 200°C oven 7 minutes.
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